TEXTILES.ORG
“How do you imagine the ultimate functional jacket 4.0?” Sympatex Technologies investigated this question during a two-day design “hackathon,” together with a group of 20 outdoor bloggers and influencers at Mittenwald Hut on May 18 and 19.
David Bacci, extreme mountaineer and Greenpeace activist; and Joe Stocker, clothing designer, served as mentors and experts for the “closed loop meets textile industry 4.0” project. The functional jacket 4.0 will be presented at OutDoor 2017 in Friedrichshafen in June.
The jacket is designed to allow end users to configure their own garment using color and design element choices resulting from the hackathon. It will be available to the public in June.
According to Sympatex the material basis of the jacket is a 100 percent recycled laminate from the current Sympatex portfolio. The membrane consists of 100 percent polyether-ester and is produced in a climate neutral way, as are the textiles. The membrane’s production waste is reused via the Sympatex pre-consumer recycling. The recycled outer fabrics and linings consist of polyester fibers certified by the Global Recycle Standard and bluesign®.
The company says that, compared to 1 kilogram of oil-based polyester fibers, the production of 1 kilogram of recycled polyester fibers results in 32 percent carbon dioxide reduction, 60 percent energy savings and 94 percent less water consumption. Water consumption is also reduced by choosing digital color printing over wet coloring.
And when end users are finished with the jacket, all of it can be recycled. Sympatex has integrated a return label inside the garment. The jacket is sent directly to a plastic recycler, which allows for spinning out the PES fibers and closing the textile life cycle loop.
Sympatex develops, produces and distributes membranes, laminates and functional textiles as well as finished products worldwide.